6 transformational packaging production trends of 2017

Based on page views throughout 2017, here are the top packaging production trends you and your peers were most interested in.

Industry 4.0, cobots and new processing methods are all revolutionizing today’s packaging operations—and packaging engineers are eager to learn what they can to leverage these technologies. As part of our end-of-the-year review, we’ve identified our top articles of the year related to packaging production, based on page views at PackagingDigest.com.

Some articles in our 2017 list were actually posted in earlier years, and show the high value of our coverage of emerging trends, even as they continue to evolve. (It also shows the power our articles wield for search engine optimization/SEO.)

Help us count down the final days of 2017 with a countdown of our top packaging automation articles of the year:

How will Industry 4.0 impact packaging operations? Environmental advocate and law school graduate Kelly Cramer, now a senior manager at GreenBlue and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, logically makes her argument in Part 1 of a two-part series:

“The world is changing as we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“Due in part to changing behaviors and desires, consumption is changing.

“As consumption is changing, the systems of production are also changing.

“Sustainability is a new standard and expectation in production and consumption.

“Because packaging touches all products, and because consumption and production are fundamentally changing, packaging will also fundamentally change.

“The traditional product/packaging system will struggle in the Fourth Industrial Revolution if it doesn’t adapt fast enough to the new demands put on it―but these changes can also set packaging free.”

Among the challenges Cramer sees are ecommerce and dimensional weight shipping. Among the exciting possibilities, she points to product concentrates and high-quality shelf-stable foods thanks to microwave-assisted thermal sterilization (MATS) processing (spoiler alert: more on this to come!).

Read the entire article by clicking the headline link above. Cramer’s Part 2 examines what industry can do about adapting packaging for this next era of production.